No, it's not. It's not because a display can do it, it just doesn't cast a fucking shadow while it does it. I can't believe I have to point this out to you. Are you trolling?

A display can 'do' all sorts of things, including render a shadow or a 3D space, but neither are authentically flat (or both are authentically digital, take your pick).

Layered documents are 3D metaphors for 'real-world' objects. They are (or can be) as flat as Manet, but not as Mondrian. Read up on the history of flatness in modern visual representation (you can start with my previous posts, and the Greenberg article, and go from there). Unless you are being intentionally ironic, you can't tout digital authenticity ala flatness (much less in a retro-Futurist manifesto) and be taken seriously if you are going to pile document windows on top of each other. Metro-style app-snapping is flat. Windows desktop in Metro-style garb isn't. Sorry.

I'm not even sure why we should care about "authenticity." The notion in this context seems almost vacuous. I guess we can give it some content insofar as "authentic" is made a synonym for non-skeuomorphic UI design - but that's still leaves the term as a rhetorical flourish and says nothing about whether "authenticity" really improves the user experience. And in the end, is there anything truly authentic about most any UI? They're all ways of presenting the non visual data of a computer's memory in a human comprehensible format. The closest thing to an "authentic" UI would be the wall of digital gibberish interpreted by hackers in The Matrix, I guess.

I only care about what works. If there's compelling evidence that Metro's UI design language allows Win 8 users to work more efficiently than users of Win7 or OS X, then great. If not, well, hey, variety is the spice of life, but we're really just arguing about the UI flavor of the month.

This is in the context of a popup menu. Popup menus are not real world objects, they're summoned verbs.

PS for the learning impaired: Authenticity in the design doesn't mean "no translation" it means "no metaphor". Again, struggling with why I have to actually point this out in a supposedly technical forum.

Even though I am sure there are many people here who are getting ready to play Microsoft victim card and cry hypocrite on anyone who likes the iOS redesign and not Metro.

You forgot to mention that there are many people here who are getting ready to play the "Apple did flat done right in one go" card.

That would be a bit misguided. Apple have been gradually flattening OS X since about 10.3 (more or less). Now the Aqua flourishes that once touted the flashy new composited UI are passe. It will be good to see Ive's guidance banish some of the iiOS horrors too. He'll have been thinking about it for a while now, I'd wager..

I won't hold my breath, but i would be good if discourse in the design blogosphere was better informed wrt flatness, skeuo, trompe, and history of it all. This didn't all pop fully-formed from the hand of God to the mouths of UI design teams in less than a decade. The dialectic and the practice of these slow-burning modernist trends span more than a century.

I'm not even sure why we should care about "authenticity." The notion in this context seems almost vacuous. I guess we can give it some content insofar as "authentic" is made a synonym for non-skeuomorphic UI design - but that's still leaves the term as a rhetorical flourish and says nothing about whether "authenticity" really improves the user experience. ...

I agree. But I still enjoyed the Metro team's initial rhetorical flourishes, full of references to speed, trains and motion. It just had to be a knowing nod to Marinetti. With time it passes into hapless blogma, but that's the way of things.

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...And in the end, is there anything truly authentic about most any UI? They're all ways of presenting the non visual data of a computer's memory in a human comprehensible format. The closest thing to an "authentic" UI would be the wall of digital gibberish interpreted by hackers in The Matrix, I guess.

Wait, so you actually considers this easily discernible in terms of windows borders?

Note also the care with which LDM has arranged the windows so that the control widget top right is visible for each one, which assists considerably with window recognition.

Yeah, you seem to be right;

LDM's example is actually still a corner case that might not reflect truly how difficult it is to see windows borders in a general case (where win controls are not always visible). So the Win8 design is actually even worse than the LDM picture presented it to be.

Lets recap what I predicted

LordDaMan wrote:

So what's the excuse now? These sites you gave me doesn't count?It's not random enough? You can't tell how a solid block of color and text is cut off right smack in the middle shows a border and z-order? That somehow me using 5 windows, despite you claiming even five, isn't enough?

Lets also go over an overview of how windows works. I clicked the little IE ion on my desktop and an IE window appeared. I middle clicked it again and again to make more windows appeared and low and behold I got this:

So I admit. I clicked an icon a bunch of times and then moved the windows around. Clearly that's the wrong way to use a tabbed browser and in reality everyone has 5 or more browser windows opened with one tab in each arranged so the controls are always covered. That's the one and true way to use a tabbed browser afterall

Wait, so you actually considers this easily discernible in terms of windows borders?

Note also the care with which LDM has arranged the windows so that the control widget top right is visible for each one, which assists considerably with window recognition.

Yeah, you seem to be right;

LDM's example is actually still a corner case that might not reflect truly how difficult it is to see windows borders in a general case (where win controls are not always visible). So the Win8 design is actually even worse than the LDM picture presented it to be.

Lets recap what I predicted

LordDaMan wrote:

So what's the excuse now? These sites you gave me doesn't count?It's not random enough? You can't tell how a solid block of color and text is cut off right smack in the middle shows a border and z-order? That somehow me using 5 windows, despite you claiming even five, isn't enough?

Lets also go over an overview of how windows works. I clicked the little IE ion on my desktop and an IE window appeared. I middle clicked it again and again to make more windows appeared and low and behold I got this:

So I admit. I clicked an icon a bunch of times and then moved the windows around. Clearly that's the wrong way to use a tabbed browser and in reality everyone has 5 or more browser windows opened with one tab in each arranged so the controls are always covered. That's the one and true way to use a tabbed browser afterall

Not saying that you intentionally did anything. Jimcampbell and I were just saying that perhaps by happenstance, your example still come out to be the corner case, since the most prominent part of the flat window chrome for each window just happened to be visible. That is not going to be the case generally for some random layout of windows.

Just for reference, this was the comparison between LDM's desktop and my desktop with the same sites:

So what's the excuse now? These sites you gave me doesn't count? It's not random enough? You can't tell how a solid block of color and text is cut off right smack in the middle shows a border and z-order? That somehow me using 5 windows, despite you claiming even five, isn't enough?

Wait, so you actually considers this easily discernible in terms of windows borders?

For me the big take away will be Apple being able to upend its entire UI in less than a year, while MS is still fiddling around and refining Metro ...

You say that as if Apple doesn't continually fiddle with and refine their own UIs. It's not like they haven't done it in pretty much *every* *single* *point* *release* *ever* *shipped*.

True, but I meant it as more with major parts of the UI so its not really to the same degree as MS has with Metro so far

What you said was that Apple could redo it's entire UI in less than a year (which i don't know if we actually have evidence for), while MS spends years fiddling and refining. I'm not even certain if the first statement is true. Furthermore, Apple *also* spends years fiddling and refining their UIs as well.

LDM's example is a corner case? what have you people been doing with the Windows OS low these many years?

Who has windows strewn about without the controls accessible? and if for some bizarre reason they did such a stupid thing, why wouldn't they USE THE F'ING TASK BAR WHICH HAS BEEN THERE FOR 18 DAMN YEARS!

Also, I can't remember if it's been mentioned before, but hp.com is now very very very flat.

It works ok in some cases. I hate the HP networking sub page though. really bad design. really easy to click in the wrong set of tabs.

Not saying that you intentionally did anything. Jimcampbell and I were just saying that perhaps by happenstance, your example still come out to be the corner case, since the most prominent part of the flat window chrome for each window just happened to be visible. That is not going to be the case generally for some random layout of windows.

Bullshit. Jimcambell flat out said I set this up on purpose.

Also, who in the world is going to have a random window placement? There's *ZERO* possible way in windows 8 (or any version for the past 18 years!) that the windows are going to be random. It's either tiled in the location where you *on purpose* put a window the last time you opened them.

And what yoho brought up and what I brought up. You do have a taskbar. You do have alt-tab. You have multiple ways to switch between windows. You even have aero peek when you highlight one of the thumbnails in the taskbar to make things easier.

Who knew that using an official design term when describing an aspect of the design in a design thread would get ridiculed?

Whoa, it's official! Argument over folks!

It's being ridiculed because you're using the term as a net positive as if it actually means anything in of itself. Who the fuck cares if something is "authentically digital" if the end result is aesthetically ugly and more visually confusing? That's the entire point of the article linked in the OP - flat and sparse interface design is a positive trend because it generally leads to less clutter and easier to navigate interfaces, but being dogmatically flat to fit some idiotic "authentic" new "standard" serves no purpose other than to demonstrate a religious approach to a design concept.

Seems like we've converged on drop shadows being the difference between "almost flat" and flat.

For this reason I can't wait to see iOS7.

I feel like this is a pointless ramble. Trying to invent a new word "almost flat" just so we shouldn't give credit to MS. MS starting a trend in design is a sacrilege in the eyes of all designers in front of their macs.

As for drop shadow, new Office and Zune too have drop shadows. I guess we can say MS started "almost flat" too.

I feel like this is a pointless ramble. Trying to invent a new word "almost flat" just so we shouldn't give credit to MS.

No one has implied that, pretty much everyone in this thread, including the article in the OP, has given MS credit for really popularizing the flat look, just that in some cases - particularly with Metro - they're becoming dogmatic and overly rigid recently.

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MS starting a trend in design is a sacrilege in the eyes of all designers in front of their macs.

Nice strawman.

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As for drop shadow, new Office and Zune too have drop shadows. I guess we can say MS started "almost flat" too.

You will hear nothing but praise from me for Zune for example, I think it's a gorgeous and highly effective interface. It has a fantastic compromise between flatness, information density vs. clean. Unfortunately, MS is deprecating it - it no longer can sync with Windows Phone 8, for that they have a new "Sync" app which is atrocious in both form and function. Or, you can use Metro Xbox Live music, which has the same detriments IMO. Maybe in 2 more years we'll get the same functionality with an Xbox-branded app they abandoned, just idiotic.

Office and to a somewhat greater extent, Visual Studio has some problems with blandness, but still I do appreciate the drop shadows and the gradients used in spots. So...did they not get the memo about "authenticity"? The beef here is with WinDiv, hence the examples from Win8, not Office or Zune.

It's being ridiculed because you're using the term as a net positive as if it actually means anything in of itself.

No I wasn't, that's just absolute horseshit. I was using it to explain why Metro design throws out drop shadows, I made no qualitative judgement. Do you want to make another attempt to justify your ridicule with some honesty behind it this time or do you want to accept it's basically because you're acting like a cunt?